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Immigrant Serving Agencies “deliver services to newcomers that are not offered by other institutions, advocate change to discriminatory policies and practices, and assist mainstream organizations in adapting their models of education, service delivery and development within ethno-racial communities” (Beyene et al. 1996 in George et al. 2007).

Immigrant groups, organizations and service providers fulfill several important functions

(Cordero-Guzman 2005; Holder 1998):

fill key service gaps in their communities

Increase access to “mainstream services”

articulate needs and extend welfare provisions to newcomers

involved in all stages of the immigration and adaptation process

play a central role in all aspects of community formation and development (including building pride and identity)

To the extent that diversity has been featured in social work volumes in Canada, it has been primarily through a multicultural lens, albeit with some contributions that did focus on newcomers. There is no Canadian equivalent to American and International examples of social work collections focused on newcomers (Valtonen 2008, Potocky-Tripodi 2002).

“Despite this long history [settlement houses], there is a notable scarcity of social work research focused explicitly on newcomers to Canada and the specific challenges they may face” (Biles et al. 2010).

“. . . we cannot help but reflect on how the very fact of being new in Canada, and the attendant stresses and strains of the migration process itself—not to mention the difficult waters of the various immigration statuses—means that social workers seeking to assist newcomers need to know more about their particular circumstances in order to help them effectively. It will entail learning about immigration and forging partnerships with those organizations that already provide a wide range of services to newcomers” (Biles et al. 2010).

“Religion is a blind spot for public policy in Canada” (Biles and Ibrahim 2005).

“. . . we must include religion in theories of contemporary international migration. The ways in which migrants actively make use of existing cultural institutions, such as the church and religious practices, throughout various stages of the migration process, from the decision to migrate to the development of transnational communities, are critical to understanding contemporary international migration (Hagan and Ebaugh 2003).

“It is now becoming increasingly commonly accepted in public and academic discourse that religious groups have been at the forefront of settlement initiatives for decades, even centuries” (Bramadat and Biles 2005).

“While religious communities and religion per se now play minor roles in the setting of immigration levels, agreement on the mix, and definition of selection criteria, they continue to have a significant involvement in settlement and integration” (Biles and Ibrahim 2005).

Religious institutions can and do challenge the Canadian state (Lippert 2005, Biles 2005b)

“Surprisingly little has been written on the role of ethnicity in shaping Canada’s Christian churches” (Bramadat and Seljak 2008)

Religiously active are more active in volunteer work and demonstrate a strong spillover effect, suggesting that religious citizens also volunteer for more secular organizations (Ruiter and De Graaf 2006).

“Volunteering to help others solve community problems is more likely among members of churches that emphasize this-worldy social concerns”; social pressure works (Wilson and Janoski 1995; Bekkers and Schuyt 2008)

Protestants/ “Other” / No religion are more likely to be members of voluntary associations than Catholics and Jews (Lam 2006, 2002)

To some degree religious organizations compete with secular organizations for the time and energy of members; attendance at religious services has a small negative effect on voluntary sector membership, except for Catholics where the reverse is true (Lam 2002; Becker and Dhingra 2001; Wilson and Janoski 1995).

“the election of the Conservative government under Stephen Harper has prompted civil society actors to strengthen their ties to their own members and to make alliances across sectors” (Holly 2009).

Capacity

“The harsh reality – the real elephant in the room – is that while all agree on the value of a vibrant voluntary sector, the practice of several federal governments of cutting back capacity further over the past decade and a half has begun the process of systematically killing the sector by eliminating funding sources, adding administrative burdens to reduce project risk to zero, and transferring transaction costs to a sector ill-equipped to take them up” (Graham 2009, Banting 2000).

“It was predicted that, with the rise of the welfare state in the 1960s, ethnic associations dealing with the individual adjustment and advancement of immigrants would become less important (Moodley 1983). The function of these associations, Moodley insists would be largely assumed by a host of state-directed social agencies” (Guo 2007).

“On the whole, ethnic organizations act as social service providers, maintain ethnic identities, and promote integration. In addition, they function as the ‘link’ or ‘broker’ between newcomers and formal service providers” (Jenkins 1988 in Guo 2007, Fennema 2004).

“immigrants’ associations are poorly organised and play a marginal role in the local decision-making process . . . Local governments seem in general to prefer Italian pro-immigrant associations, especially as far as access to funding and running for public contracts is concerned” (Caponio 2005)

“Access to new transnational opportunities for migrants’ organised action is therefore not independent from the opportunities they have at the national level. . . For all the under-exploitation, it can therefore be claimed that a progressive movement towards a multi-levelled and multi-spacial [sic] participation and representation of migrants does appear to be already under way” (Danese 1998).

Beiser, Morton. 1997. Strangers at the Gate: The ‘Boat People’s’ First ten Years in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Bekkers, Rene and Theo Schuyt. 2008. “And Who is Your Neighbour? Explaining Denominational Differences in Charitable Giving and Volunteeringf in the Netherlands” Review of Religious Research 50(1): 74-96.

Beyene, D., Butcher, C., Joe, B. and Richmond, T. 1996. “Immigrant service agencies: A fundamental component of anti-racist social services” in C.E. James ed. Perspectives on Racism and the Human Services Sector: A Case for Change. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Bramadat, Paul and Susie Fisher. 2010.”Religiously Organizations and the Integration of Immigrants, Refugees and Temporary Foreign Workers: An Annotated Bibliography and List of Community Organizations”

Holder, Saddeiqa. 1998. “The Role of Immigrant Serving Organizations in the Canadian Welfare State: A Case Study” PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto.

Holly, Grant. 2009. “Shifting Political Opportunities and Strategies: The Case of Childcare Advocacy in 2004-2006” in Laforest, Rachel ed. 2009. The New Federal Policy Agenda and the Voluntary Sector. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press: 109-136.